


Brag It Out with a Card of Ten

by Vulgarweed



Category: Good Omens - Gaiman & Pratchett
Genre: Action/Adventure, Age of Sail, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Pirate, F/M, M/M, Swashbucklathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-30
Updated: 2010-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Them-centric Pirate!fic, written for amor_remanet in Swashbucklathon '06. Pirate Captain Adam Young has something very precious stolen from his crew and will stop at nothing to get it back. A witch, an angel, a demon, and lots of pirates help, hinder, and get the hell out of the way. Thanks to Use_theforce_em for beta reading!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Prologue: London**

Considering that one Mr. Fell, a respectable businessman, most commonly thought to be of some gentility fallen on dignified hard times, had not actually been known to sell a book in some seventeen years, it was widely believed in the neighbourhood that his unassuming shop must serve some other purpose. He would have been appalled to hear any of the speculations about the nature of the contraband he must be keeping, or of the nature of the company that sometimes came to rendezvous with him (and fortunately, he never did; various agents of various constabularies, both royally chartered and not so, tended to visit him once and once only.)

Many of the speculations were quite lurid, but none of them were so imaginative as the reality.

"It's been _ten years!"_ the bookseller cried to his flashy visitor. "Do you know how worried I've been?"

"About me?" said Crowley sardonically. "I do appreciate that. But—"

"Er…you and the _whole world."_

"Well. Yes," Crowley sighed. "Still here. So that's a good sign."

"He'd be well over eleven now," said Aziraphale, flustered, racking his encyclopedic memory for the precise point at which…well, it didn't matter. _All_ prophets were lousy mathematicians.[1] It was an incompatible skill set, or something.

"Yes, he is. And what I've heard is that…well, he's not in England. Not anymore. But he may still be found under English colours. Some of the time, anyway."

"And that means…"

"If he's not on any land, which he isn't, and if he hasn't commenced the Battle in any country…and if he had, I would've heard, and so would you."

Aziraphale blinked a few times, and then turned to the discarded stack of yellowing broadsheets he rarely read, due to their atrocious grammar and crude sensationalism. _Tayles of Bloodfport and Devylltry upon ye Feas._

"Oh, for…someone gave him a _ship?"_

"It seems he's got one somehow. Maybe even a letter of marque. Wouldn't put it past 'em."

The angel, for Aziraphale was one, rubbed his temples in frustration. "Oh, I _do_ hate sea travel."

"That makes two of us," said the demon, for that was Crowley's sort. Nevertheless, he was already planning to make his departure on a trade vessel from Portugal, for several reasons, foremost among them being that they tended to sail in warmer climes and yet weren't Spain. (He was already beginning to sow seeds in his mind for a particularly devilish style of swimwear to popularise in Portugal's largest colony, though he suspected they wouldn't be ready for it for several centuries.)

Aziraphale was assuming he'd have to find his way on a reliable, solid good English ship. At least that trade had improved greatly since the days of vanishing colonists and religious fanatics. Still, he was nervous, even though his knowledge of piracy was more or less limited to some rather romantic accounts of events from that dashing Sir Drake's day. The more he'd known, the more discomfited he would have been.

"Well, then…we'll have to split up, I suppose," said Aziraphale.

"It would be more efficient," Crowley said.

"How will we…"

"If anything's really about to happen, I suppose we…wouldn't miss each other in the end, then, would we?" Crowley said, a little bit morosely and an even smaller bit hopefully.

"I imagine not," said Aziraphale. Barring any more unwelcome communications or attempts at recalls or anything else he'd rather not think about, that is.

"Good luck," said Crowley, holding out his hand.

"Good luck," Aziraphale said, and took it. And held it just a little too long.

_The astute old salt of a reader will surmise that the one they seek is the Antichrist, the Great Beast, etcetera, staking out his turf—or in this case, his surf—in anticipation of the End of Days._

The man Aziraphale and Crowley have heard rumours of and believe they ought to be chasing goes by the unfortunate name of Warlock. He is the son of a Colonial shipping merchant-governor of the most respectable appearance, a secret doyenne of the Hellfire Club and devotee of Satan, who tutored his son from the cradle in infamy and blasphemy. All well and good Warlock should go to sea to seek his fortune before the Appointed Time; he would probably have done well enough to go to sea just to escape all the rest of his generation: the Prudences and Increases and Fidelities and Temperances and Thou-Shalt-Not-Kills (he got beat up a lot on the playground) and Chastities (she took the virginities of all but two of her schoolmates) and the lot.

Warlock commands the Megiddo_, a mighty galleon of forty guns and a hundred men. He flies the flags of all nations until his prey comes close, and then it is always the red of 'no quarter.' He has terrorised the New World coastline from Buenos Ayres to Boston, and he is reckless with his blunderbuss and profligate with his cat-o-nine. He is a tall man, boisterous and rank-smelling and dreadful._

He is no more an Antichrist than you or I.

 

**The Fire Down Below Tavern (A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy), Tortuga**

"Fi'teen English ships bound fer Virginny, ne'er seen again," said one sailor, shuddering, and the tall mulatto beside him crossed himself at the implication.

"And the men…?"

"They say ten ships burned, all hands on board. Say they bled the captain like a pig to lure the sharks."

"Aye, that's the _Megiddo,"_ spat the coxswain of the _Dragon's Breath,_ "Bloody great an' fearsome wherever three-sheets salts start seein' who's got the biggest rumour. I got a piece o' eight says the _Megiddo_ ain't taken half what the _Grog Blossom_'s got."

The boatswain of the _Vengeance_ took a big spit himself and parted with a tooth as well as his rum-sterilized gob. "Ha, the _Grog Blossom_. Scuttlebutt on those lubbers says they've never killed a man as surrendered to 'em."

"Don't 'ave to do much killin'" slurred Coxswain Swiper. "They all s'rrender, soon as hear that shriekin' banshee of a quartermistress…"

There came a cry that chilled their blood and shattered cheaply made bottles at a distance as men heard their deaths just as surely as they'd imagined 'em back in their beds on the still cool lands of Ireland and Scotland and Spain and New England and wherever else their boyhood terrors had first come upon them. And half the filthy, hardened pirates filling the dank rum hell stood up, and the other half cringed and became smaller.

But Swiper moved too slow caught between the two courses of action, and the heavy ceramic jug full of highly condensed rum came down upon his skull with a cracking sound like the report of a pistol. He screamed once as blood and hooch stung his eyes, blurring the image of the wildcat falling upon him.

Boatswain Cooper (or was that Cooper Boatswain) felt he ought to half-heartedly take a swing, but he preferred to be too slow, and let Swiper take his medicine. That didn't mean it wasn't a good chance to take a swing at _someone, _ and his tablemate was the nearest victim—or would have been had he not quickly drawn a slender shiv at the first sight of excitement, and lights went out for the slow-moving Cooper.

Bottles and furniture flew about the room like sideways hail in a gale as one slim, vicious woman dressed in crimson coat and full metal arsenal whaled upon her victim. "Quarter_what? _ We'll see ya pr'nounce _mistress_ when you're pullin' your black teeth out through your bunghole!"

It was already going badly for Swiper and it could have gone much worse were it not for the tall young man in the trim dark coat and broad black hat making his implacable way through the violent swirl of pottery and flying bodies and smashing walls and spurting blood. With a sigh he lifted the ferocious female off her pulpy opponent. "Talkin' about us again, were they, Pep?"

"That son of a mangy syphilitic _he-dog!" _

Swiper looked up through a reddish haze. Wasn't often you got to see pirate legends happening right in front of you. Playing a bit part in one of 'em wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Redhanded Pepper was real alright, and so was her Captain, Steadfast Adam Young the Strikingly Handsome. Wasn't a pirate alive who wouldn't want to bend a cabin boy that pretty over a cannon. Wasn't a pirate alive who'd risk it with that one; unflappable, golden-haired, and even more terrifying than his bellicose crewmate. You could imagine a stare like that in the sky on the night it's said the Lord's wrath took Port Royal down below the sea, giving Davey Jones his mighty crew of damnéd bonebags and his harem of drownéd whores—you didn't even have to be on a ship to get taken by the sea when the Deep Ones roused. 'Cause the preachers might say it was Sodom on the shore and fitly drowned by the salt, but those who'd talked to those who were there said no good God could've had anything to do with that.

But if those lost souls had seen any angels as the mud swallowed 'em up, the avengers would've had smiles like Captain Young's.

"Right then," said Pepper, wiping her hands on an unconscious tar's grimy coat. "Drink?"

"Love one, if you can find anyone to serve it," Adam smiled.

"Bet _you_ can," said Pepper.

"Don't need to," said Adam, reaching behind what was left of the shabby driftwood bar for two perfectly poured leather tankards. The wench who'd been hiding behind stuck her head up and smiled hopefully with every tooth she had left.

"Don't wanna really talk here, though," Pepper said, spilling ale. "The walls have ears."

There was actually only one wall with someone's lost ear stuck to it. But considering there were only two walls left standing, that was too high a percentage.

***

The _Grog Blossom_ was an unpretentious three-mast bark of schooner size, fast and light and high in the keel, capable of slinking up rivers like an eel and riding low below the gale like a dolphin. She could've been bigger and she could've been flashier and she could've been more fearsome[2], but instead, she was practical.

Above all, she was safe. She could lie at anchor virtually unguarded (as she was doing this night); she could carry far more guns than she ought, and barnacles got a bad feeling about her.

She lay asleep in a protected cove, only a few of her small crew needing some R&amp;R from Tortuga's high-energy R&amp;R, tossing lightly on hammocks as she rolled on gentle waves.

Two members of her crew—that'd be Coxswain Brian and Pilot Wensleydale—looked at their room in the Footloose Futtock Inn with sinking confidence.

"Well, that's a right glory hole," sighed Brian.

"I wouldn't have thought a few bedbugs would matter so much to you," said Wensleydale. "They'll find good company under your hat."

"That's low, Wens. And it was your idea, I thought."

"It most certainly was not," said Wensleydale primly. "The sky's beautifully clear tonight, and you know Adam's hoping to map out a safe course to Cathay. I have to make projections towards Patagonia first."

"Not what you said last night. You wanted…privacy, I thought." Brian's look was half sour and half dejected.

"Well. I had had more than usual to drink."

"Yeah. You almost had a whole cup all by yourself. You were swayin' a little bit."

Wensleydale's eyes narrowed under his thin spectacles.

"You started playin' with a cutlass and goin' on about how you wanted to cut somebody just to see what it was like."

"I know I did _not."_

"You did. And then you grabbed me. Right _here,"_ whispered Brian.

Wensleydale actually looked abashed at that. "Yeah, I remember that."

"Yeah, good, I'd punch you one if you pretended you didn't."

"You're such a rude arse, Brian. It's a good job you're not interested in women, they'd never put up with that."

Brian looked away. The low bed sagged almost all the way to the floor in the middle. Like a hammock, only louder. And buggier. And splinterier.

"I can't stay in here," Wensleydale said finally. "It stinks." He turned on his heel and stormed as well as anyone who was half-blind in the smoky air could down the rickety stairs into the main hall, where a few straggly and sun-leathered sailors hooted at him. Brian had nothing to do but follow.

A bit of oxygen later, they were stumbling in the sand of the glass-pitted and mud-spotted beach, where foul chanteys in five-part cacophony nearly drowned out the sounds of an active market in the syphilis exchange among the yellowed palms.

It wasn't a place for propriety.

"I feel like a _chump,_ Wens! I'll lay it out, flat out – I thought it meant something, I thought you wanted—"

"You don't know what I want and you don't care!"

"How can you say that?"

"Get this through your pickled skull – it's not about your _technique,_ that's fine! It's bigger than that!"

"Oh, not big enough for—"

Wensley turned around and faced him in the lanterns and the wan moonlight. "I want a better life, you _smelly pirate!_ I want astrolabes and star-glasses that _work_ even when Adam isn't around. I never want to watch a man eat another bloody rat as long as I live. I never want to exercise another bodily function over a hole 20 feet over the ocean in a hurricane!"

Brian clutched his stomach as though in pain, for he was, and he reached out with a grubby hand to take Wensley's arm. "Was it that slave ship we saw…I hated that too, I never saw Adam look like that before…it's a bad business sometimes, I know, I…"

"You love it. You live for it. You're a pirate born, you hate law and order and above all you hate work, and…"

"As if what I do isn't fucking _work?!_You sit there up on the foc's'le and you sit up in the crow's nest and you stare all over the place with your little compass and your little quills! I break my sodding back on wet sails the size of Wales!"

"Well, that's it then. It's a crap life. I want a job."

"You go back then. You get a job. You be a scribener or an astronomer or whatever. You sit at a desk your whole life. You do that!" Brian screamed, cursing the childish tears polluting his voice.

"I'll tender my resignation to the Captain tomorrow," said Wensleydale firmly, and turned to make his way back to the boats to get back to his ship.

Brian wavered. He trembled and he vibrated there on the sand. He could feel his body bursting into pursuit, to grab Wensleydale, to knock him down and let his rage and his dread flail themselves out. He'd look so good with his clothes torn, a little mud in his hair…

He could feel himself doing those things, but he was not doing them. He was watching Wensleydale's hunched back getting smaller and darker in the dim light, a lantern-beam shimmering for a brief moment on a brass lock of his leather case like a stolen star, and the only part of Brian that moved was his hands, trembling.

When Wensleydale was almost completely out of sight around a bend of strand, only then did Brian turn towards the shabby strip of taverns. It was going to take a lot to drink this away.

There was one member of the _Grog Blossom_'s crew yet out, who'd been having a grand old time of chasing proper cats again instead of rats only, with some actual room to run, and that was before he even got round to the local bitches, whose state of heat was more sincere than their human counterparts'. Low to the ground, one ear cocked, Dog lapped fresher rum from a mud puddle and let some of the staler rum he'd been carrying out against a palm tree, and watched Wensleydale stomp away. On a whim, he decided to trail the friendly scent.

Wensleydale started to cross the dark strip of sagging sheds that stood along the pier that led closest to the _Grog Blossom_, when he was set upon.

There were three hairy brigands, reeking and cursing, grabbing him by the hair and the coat and coshing him about the head and holding a dagger at his throat.

"This the one? The pilot? Reason fuckin' Young ne'er goes off course?"

"Coulda used him in the Sargasso!"

"Coulda used him when we ran out o' stores, for sure!"

"Nah, no meat on 'im."

"Coulda used him when we hadn't seen no whores for a year!"

Wensleydale struggled and kicked and slammed one in the gut with his briefcase, which flew open and scattered charts across the slippery creosoted wood. But he'd never been much for that, and one good blow filling his mouth with blood and he was out.

Then it was Dog's turn to lunge into the fray, howling and barking. If he'd been what he was meant to be, he'd have shredded them all with his foaming jaws and sent them down to the realm where he was, presumably, born. But though his eyes glowed red and his breath was brimstone and his teeth were sharp as sin, he was a small dog, and he was only able to rip a small strip of cloth and flesh from one pirate's leg before a good sharp kick sent him flying, and then he was dodging bullets and running into the cover of the dark shrubbery with a rag of breeches and one sheet of stars in his jaws.

He had to wait until they were out of sight with their prey before he ran for all he was worth on his little small-dog legs to find his Master.

Adam and Pepper were in a card game with a very drunk and disconsolate Brian; Dog yapped for all he was worth, which was a lot, and showed them the soggy chart and cloth. He understood Master so clearly most of the time, why couldn't it work the other way around, especially when it was so important? Much whining and gesturing and false starts toward the door of the tavern later, the three humans eventually followed Dog to the site of the struggle, and then it seemed to hit them all at once what had happened; there were the marks of a scuffle in the sandy mud and on the pier; there was a track of something heavy and human being dragged away, and there were a few more sheets of Wensleydale's charts lying scattered and trampled. But not the bulk of them, nor the case; that must have been taken also.

Brian fell on his knees in the mud and slammed his fist into the earth, shaking and holding his unhappy stomach. "God…damn…_me!" _

"Don't say that, Brian," said Adam quietly.

"Why did I let him walk away? _Why?" _

"'Cause you were _mad_ at him," said Pepper, one hand hovering over Brian's shoulder, uncertain whether to let it rest there. "You couldn'ta known anything like this would happen."

"I _should_'ve," Brian snuffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "That's what the whole bloody fight was about, he doesn't think he's cut out to be a pirate, he wants to go home. Maybe he's right…shouldn't left him alone in such a place."

"Shouldn't leave any of us alone in such a place, maybe," said Adam thoughtfully.

"What good does _that_ do?" snapped Pepper.

"Just thinkin' is all," Adam said. "Well, we won't leave anybody. We're going to find him and get him back, that's for sure."

"Really?" said Brian. "How?"

"I'm the Captain. I promise. Dog, let's trail 'em!"

Dog wagged his tail happily – at last, a talent of his put to good use. He started off along the trail, nose faithfully wedded to the ground (nearly running into a palm tree that he didn't see coming), and the three bold pirates followed as stealthily as they could and still keep up, hands on pistols and sword-hilts. They ran along a dark warren of sagging piers until they came to the very edge of the farthest one, the end of the trail at the dark and heaving sea.

There was no ship. Wensleydale's abductors had pulled anchor immediately.

Brian made no attempt to conceal his pain now, and Pepper made no attempt to hold back a bit of comfort as he slumped against her shoulder.

"We _will_ find him," Adam said. "I _mean_ it."

Clouds began to veil the moon, and a wind came up suddenly as they walked back to the pier where the _Grog Blossom_'s boats waited, strategising all the way as best they could and trying not to think of what they all knew well by now: the uncompromising and unsympathetic hugeness of the sea.

"They definitely want him alive, Brian," Pepper murmured. "It's his talent they're after."

"The course he was working on pointed south," Adam thought. "It's getting about that time of year anyhow. Don't think much of anybody'd wanna go north."

"Depends who it is," Brian said miserably. "If they're workin' the English trade, well, they _could_ go north." He didn't want to think of Wensleydale being cold and wet in a North Colonial nor'easter or trembling on the treacherous shoals of the Virginia coast, surrounded by enemies, maybe being whipped or worse, not knowing how much his friends missed him…He fought back a horrified snuffle.

"I will find out who it is," Adam said. "That's a promise too."

"Lots of people doin' that these days," Pepper said bitterly. "Knockin' folks over the head and makin' 'em work for people they don't wanna work for. It's not right."

"They're _pirates," _ said Brian. "They don't care 'bout what's right."

"We're pirates, and we do," Adam said firmly. Adam had, in fact, never pressed anybody into service and didn't much see the point of having somebody in your crew who hated you. It didn't seem safe as far as he was concerned. But privately to himself he had to admit that if he was going to do such a thing, it might be somebody like Wensleydale. Only not as smart. This last part alone felt all right to say. "Wensley's smart, Brian. That's why they want 'im, but that's part of why they're gonna regret takin' him."

"And the other part is…"

"Because now they have to deal with _us." _

The first thing Adam did once back on his ship was call a war council. He cut a dashing figure striding back and forth, fondling his musket and occasionally brandishing the long and ominous _kris_ dagger he'd won in a fair (or nearly so) fight with the King of the Malay Pirates, impressing the importance of this matter upon his crew with only a little bit of a flourish of what his mind could do when it let itself. They were a loyal pack of sea-dogs—he'd seen to that himself—and they weren't much inclined to let a good man go unaided among pirates without honour.

The second thing Adam did was write letters.[3]

He wrote to Captain Han(g)over of the pirates' den at Madagascar, and El Tiburon, as the fiercest of the Barbary Corsairs was known in Spain, and to Captain Cailleagh of the Boston byways, and the aforementioned King of the Malay Sea-Tigers, and the chief of the African pirate corps who hunted slavers, and the Viking-descended Captain Olaf, the terror of the frozen waters of Russia, and the pirates of India in the pay of the Moguls and many others he could think of but at this moment your writer cannot. He appealed to their sense of honour and justice among proud outcasts; he heaped great praises on their cleverness and bravery, he made romantic declarations of his cherishing of their friendship (and when Pepper leaned over his shoulder and made gagging noises he knew he'd hit the right tone), but most of all, he promised large rewards of booty in exchange for information.

Then he informed his own crew that while the search for Wensleydale was paramount, he had no intention of reducing his own business activities, for the riches to pay for this information would have to come from somewhere. This contributed a good deal to morale.

**One Month Later**

Wensleydale did not understand the way Captain Warlock –if that was really his name—did things. For one thing, the _Megiddo_ was certainly an impressive-looking ship—and her fiery bare-bosomed demoness figurehead was just gratuitous—but she was huge for the job and her center of gravity too high, and when the sea got choppy her massive bulk pitched and rolled like a ship half its weight.

And no, contrary to the Captain's evident opinion, simply adding more cannon did nothing for her speed or balance. Wensleydale also knew immediately that the ship was some decades overripe for a good repitching and, particularly, barnacle removal. He wasn't going to volunteer this information—or indeed, any information at all. In the frayed rope hammock in his cell above the hold, he groaned and rolled and tried to find a way to lie where his whiplash wounds didn't sting so much. That had been his wages for pointing out an unfavourable Atlantic current precisely where Warlock had his heart set on intercepting an English ship.

Up above him, over the shuddering and creaking of the _Megiddo_'s bones and the rippling of her canvas wings, he could still hear that poor bastard O'Rourke, like him pressed into service from some unpopulated alley. O'Rourke was a fiddler, and to justify his rations he had to play on command when the men were drunk, which was always, like the whip-cracks aimed at his legs when he didn't put a lively enough step in his jig.

O'Rourke had been told more than once he was a luxury and if someone had to get eaten or go overboard, he'd be first, though the pirates would regret it a little since he was a better player than their last one. Wensleydale thought O'Rourke might not be too far away from going overboard of his own volition. He also feared that he, Wensleydale, might not much regret it. The _Megiddo_'s last fiddler must've been unspeakable.

Up above, many decks up, there was a bang and a yelp, and then a chorus of harsh and jubilant shouts.

Those shouts could only mean one thing: prey.

"Ev'ry man up! Step to! Shake a carcass! Hang a leg, bilge-rats or we'll keelhaul ye slow!"

Wensleydale winced as much at the clichés as at his aching back. He picked up a cutlass with two fingers as though it were a living eel, and started up the miserable ladder, hoping against hope the fight would be over before he got through all the _Megiddo_'s ridiculous number of decks.

No such luck; he lifted his head from the hatch in time to see against the background of twilight the mast of the ship Warlock was hailing, a smallish bark with the Union Jack bright and proud.

Warlock gave the call to raise his black banner and approached her on the starboard side, flapping his long cloak and waving his huge hat, his body entirely covered in bandoliers and holsters and scabbards, his face covered mostly by beard, and his eyes full of numerous flavours of shifting lust, none of them pleasant. His pirates were massing up out of cubbyholes and lurking behind the boom of the _Megiddo_'s sails, red sunlight glinting on swords and guns and earrings and metal teeth.

"I am the Captain of the _Herald_," said the other captain with an attempt at professional pride. "And the Royal Navy is behind me."

"Well, that's just where we want 'em," sneered Warlock, and twitched his right hand once, and the _Megiddo_ rocked with the backfire of a single cannon, punching a hole in the _Herald_'s sideboards. There were groans and cries from the English ship; her passengers were in hiding and her sailors not much better.

Then the night lit up. Cannon and small-arms rattled the sky; bright blooms of fire flew back and forth between the ships like tossed petals, and the _Herald_ shuddered and lurched horribly under the onslaught.

Warlock had barely had time to signal to change the black flag for the red of no quarter, when Wensleydale, hiding bravely behind the mizzenmast, could see the _Herald_'s captain slump, and call for his own white one.

But Warlock pretended he hadn't seen that. When he drew close enough for the boarding plank, his mass of cutthroats and brigands and knaves and rogues and whatever you call people who enjoy hacking at people the way Scotsmen enjoy golf (when they too are not hacking at people) came swarming over the _Herald_'s deck like lice on a yeti, leaping and hooting and brandishing. The small fighting force the _Herald_ mustered fell before them one by one and two by two until the pirates were slipping on the blood and crunching on bone, and Wensleydale had to steady himself a little over the rail. He was a pirate, yes, but a pirate on the _Grog Blossom_, and in the grand scheme of things he hadn't seen much killing at all.

A whip lashed at his heels.

"_Pardon_ me," Wensleydale said. "I'm a _navigator!" _

"Ev'body does 'is share, ye pansy!" snarled the one-eyed and one-armed enforcer.

Everybody does their share hauling the heavy loot, that is. Wensleydale figured they had to have no illusions about his usefulness in a fight.

But none of the _Herald_'s crew cared much for their shipments now; one by one they weighed individual decisions—fight and die, don't fight and die. Swords were dropped, guns were dropped, resolve sank like an anchor, and the pillaging started in earnest.

It would've been hard to imagine a cargo less useful to pirates. Fashionable ladies' dresses, tea, and of all things, Bibles, which provided a late-coming moment of drama when a middle-aged gentleman who looked far too clean to have been on a ship this long performed an intense moment of pious protest. And when Warlock pressed forward to run him through for the comic value, his long proud blade did something it really shouldn't have done. Warlock himself looked a bit dazed, and whenever afterward someone asked him why they let the survivors of the crew go on boats with their lives if nothing else, before he burnt the _Herald_ to the waterline, he'd go a bit vague and very likely pistol-whip the fool who asked him.

The aforementioned gentleman was the only person from the _Herald_ who was not set adrift in a boat off the Carolina coast. "Ransomable," Warlock grunted.

"I'm not, you must have misunderstood," the man protested. "I'm a _bookseller. _"

"Well, ye better be," the Captain said miserably. "We'll keep ye til you we know if you're worth keepin' alive or not."

Behind the Captain's back, Wensleydale tried to shoot him a commiserating look. He figured Warlock thought the bookseller's impeccable manners meant gentry. Wensleydale just thought he knew three things about the man already: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on fermenting Viking lutefisk fumes. And since Wensleydale himself shared all those traits, he felt inclined to be kind.

**The Very Next Day, and Very Far Away**

It wasn't like Adam to be so hard to find. A wan and miserable Brian had been searching for him for hours—cabin, galley, forecastle, head and hold and every deck in between. The sun at last glinted on a flash of gold up in the crow's nest.

Brian weighed his conflicts: his own state of mind, and respect for Adam's apparent desire for solitude.

Sod it. If you couldn't go to the captain, who could you go to? The very first rest of his weight on the rope ladder alerted Adam of course, and that painted-by-a-salacious-Old-Master face leaned over to watch him climb and encourage him onward. Brian picked up his pace a little and tried not to look down. He didn't like heights. Adam didn't seem to care.

When he finally reached the top and tried not to turn unpleasant colours at the way the height of the mast magnified every little pitch and toss of the _Grog Blossom_ on the dark blue South American sea, he thought the insufficient wooden bucket got a little larger. Adam beckoned Brian to sit beside him, and produced a bottle of rum from his coat.

"I'm sorry we've had no luck so far, Brian."

"That's alright," Brian said, swigging deeply. "I know you're tryin'."

"I am, I really am. The thing that drives me mad today…I thought I had a sense…y'know…I mean, I don't know if you that I…sometimes…"

"Get a feelin' about it?"

"Yeah. That's why I come up here. It's more clear. And after what that ol'tar on that ship last week said—"

"Before Pepper gored 'im, y'mean?"

"Yeah. Before he said that about women on ships. And offered to…yeah. That was bad."

"That ship was a bad omen anyway," Brian said, drinking again. "Spanish. I've heard what they do to English pirates when they get 'em back home."

"Yeah. Inquisition," Adam muttered darkly and shuddered, then sat up straight. "_That_ hasn't happened to him, Brian. I think I'd know!"

"I trust ya," Brian said morosely.

"That's the thing. I thought I had a feelin'. That's why I turned the ship around, come up from goin' to Argentina and we're comin' back. They're not usin' our old plan, the one Wensleydale wrote up for me right before. I thought I could sense him, see, if I took everything everybody 'at's talked to us said and worked it out, and then reached out, with my…mind, I guess…I thought I had a hint. And then today….nothing. It's blanked out. Somethin's getting' in my way."

"Somethin'…oh, shite!" Brian said, shivering. "Someone just walked over my grave."

"_Swam_ over it, more likely," Adam said. "Pirate."

"I am," Brian said through another mouthful, the one that relaxed him enough to let him lay his head on Adam's shoulder. "And I don't wanna change, I like it. But if--_when_ we get Wensleydale back, an he wants to, then…"

"I got it," Adam said. "Don't wanna lose any o'my crew, specially us as grew up together dreamin' about ships and freedom and stuff. Don't want things to change. But I'd rather know you're safe an happy, somewhere."

"Don't even know where we'd go," Brian said.

"Well, I know where we're gonna go _now," _ Adam said. "Shoulda listened to this back in Tortuga—that ol' cook wi' the wooden leg? Said he was a real Gypsy?"

"Yeah?"

"Said there was a witch he knew in the bayou off New Orleans…said he'd seen a lotta witches but she's the real thing. She can help folks find things…and people, he said."

"Really? I don't know if I believe in that."

"If she's real, I bet she can. There's always a price with witches, though."

"Even good witches? _Are_ there good witches?"

"I reckon there are, but I don't know if she's one or not. Anyway, why would she do stuff for us for free? She doesn't know us."

"Well, we can get a lot of gold if we're lucky," said Brian a little dubiously. The hold was floating a little bit light for his comfort.

"I don't mean gold," Adam said. "Though I'd feel better 'bout it if we had more."

"I suppose its gettin' right expensive, all those pieces o' eight you're handin' out to every ship ye hail an' all."

"It was worth it for the leads."

"Can't prove any of 'em, though. Not til we see the ship do we know."

Adam sighed and pulled a sleek pipe from his coat, of teakwood and ivory, and a plug of sweet-scented tobacco.

"Since when d'ya get that?" cried Brian.

"Off Captain Bones, in good faith for his favours. He remembers how I kept his secret map safe at Malabar. He'll keep an eye out."

"It's not good for you," Brian smiled.

"Doubt it'll hurt me," Adam said, taking a smoke.

"Can I?"

"Of course."

"So…the plan is…" Brian said, recapping. "We keep sailing back up along the Spanish Main. Put in at Tortuga again, see if anything's heard, and if not?"

"The witch," said Adam, looking just a little bit excited at the prospect.

**Some Days Later**

Adam had taken to parsing the stars by himself in Wensleydale's absence, and he was hardly useless at it—he couldn't have been—but he hadn't the kidnapped navigator's easy skill with it. What worked did so because he fervently believed things ought to make sense. And seeing him in his cabin by night with the oil-lamp burning and his forehead stained with ink where he'd idly propped his head was to witness a sort of grey frustration that never erupted into anger but never entirely lifted either.

It'd been going on a long time.

Not even Dog's barking and scratching at the door when he wanted to run loose from poop deck (aptly named, when Dog was there) to forecastle and down to the hold to chase rats and lap up disgusting bilgewater, forgetting as he always did that it was salt and would only make him thirstier, was enough to cheer Adam for long.

His gloom was felt from bow to stern. The becalmings weren't helping, nor was the surprising lack of ships.

Brian took to entertaining the restless little hellhound with the upturned ear, mostly by spinning inedible bits of hardtack across the surface of the deck until even Dog was motivated to chase it. Pepper watched them and laughed and twisted a mangled piece of old rope for the little dog to chew on.

Brian thought it was just as well Adam stayed locked in so much. For it was fine when they were one, or two, together, any of them, but when they were three it only drew attention to the one who was missing.

And the particular night before he'd had a hard time of it in his cabin, for Wensleydale infested all his dreams—Wensleydale soggy and white and dead, rising up out of the sea, clutching an astrolabe trailing seaweed and drooling water from his mouth and either warning Brian away or beckoning him close, it was hard to tell and could have been both. And then Wensleydale happy and blushing and, eventually, quite naked, unambiguously beckoning Brian close. Brian awoke exhausted from all that effort of weeping and screaming and coming at once, and from the disorientation of finding that neither nightmare nor sweet dream, vivid as they both were, had come true.

And what was he to do about this? Nag Adam to try harder? Not a good way to start any morning.

Dog's eyes were fixed on the horizon, and it was he who started barking first, before the crewman in the crow's nest raised up the cry.

"Good boy," said Brian, finally brightening. "First share goes to you then!"

Pepper ran to bang on Adam's door before suiting herself up in her most fearsome coat of motley, and more fearsome still, her arsenal clinking and shining on her chest and her hips. "Aye, bring it here," she cried to the air and the ship still far away. "Bring it here!" And the _Grog Blossom_ sprang to life all around her, leaving her as an island of eager, vibrating stillness in a sea of men heaving at sails and arming cannon. Adam came up behind her with his sword in his hand and a wild look in his eyes.

She was a Portuguese trade-ship, heavy-laden and laboring under the wind, just days out of the colonial capital on the Bahia de Todos os Santos, bound for Lisboa. She seemed wary and untrusting, and from a distance the _Grog Blossom_'s crew could watch the Portuguese crew's desperate work at evasion. The _Grog Blossom_ flew no flag until she drew close enough at starboard to read the other ship's name, the _Maçã Dourada_—which was promising—and he waited for the most dramatic moment to give the order to hoist it: black.

The trading captain stood amidships, shouting defiance in Portuguese, a language he happened to be quite eloquent in, but unfortunately this was lost on the English pirates, and what he changed to quickly at the first bracing jolt of cannon was roughly English and much less heroic in character. The second jolt sent up a shower of wood and flame and a flurry of men trading in ropes and swabs for swords and guns.

The battle raged for…all of twenty minutes before the _Maçã Dourada_ lurched terribly in the water, and her doughty sailors began to pitch themselves into the sea in terror at Pepper's shrieking, blade swinging advance by rope-swing onto her quarterdeck, by the firing of Captain Young's guns as he led his crew over the boarding plank and into a short and messy melee. No blade ever touched him; no pistol shot ever came near him. And no one close to Pepper ever got a chance to try.

Staggering and grabbing at rigging for support, the wounded Portuguese captain gave one last signal for one last flag: white. When all his men were subdued and bound, Adam gave him a respectful bow for a fight well done, sweeping off his wide tricorne hat and presenting a glimpse of his spun-gold hair.

There was a good deal more gold down below. Pepper and Brian and a happily yipping Dog sank their hands into open chests of doubloons and pieces of eight and reais, boxes and bags of earrings and necklaces and bracelets, some in the elaborate styles of the once-rich New World natives. They decked themselves out playfully. They found a small jeweled and gold-threaded belt, perhaps a child's, and fastened it smartly around Dog's neck for a collar. Their crewmates strained and balanced and heaved to get it all up on the main deck and over to the _Grog Blossom_ while Pepper and Brian and Dog continued their investigation. It had only just begun; there were great crates and barrels of coffee and tobacco and grain and most of all, it appeared, rum. Half the orlop deck—now pierced by cannon and showing sunlight and sea--seemed devoted to its storage.

Brian had been attempting to pack himself a quick pipe before Dog's hysterical barking brought him round again, with Pepper, to a dank corner of the hold that reeked of rum; barrels had been shattered by cannon balls, and rum ran down the floor and back again and over their shoes with each slight roll of the limping ship on the waves.

Dog was barking urgently at something lying there in the wreckage of a busted barrel, something Brian and Pepper took at first to be a length of old rope shut up in the barrel somehow. But then Pepper looked closer, and bent to pick it up with some fascination.

"It's a _snake," _ she said. "A rum-pickled snake!" She started to laugh and draped it over one arm, where it hung very limply. Dog barked even louder.

Brian looked at it disinterestedly. "You should throw it overboard," he said. "It's dead. Prob'ly the rum preserved it or somethin'."

"I'll make somethin' out of its bones then. A necklace." Pepper's fashion sense was as ladylike and demure as her professional manner.

And this would've been a fine plan and pastime, had the snake not made them both jump out of their skins by moving its head painfully and belching shockingly loudly.

"It's _not_ dead," Pepper squealed. "Look at it, it's _drunk!" _

"_That_'s somethin' you don't see every day," said Brian.

The snake hiccupped. Dog was all but apoplectic.

"I'm keepin' it," Pepper said firmly. "Ev'body else's got a parrot or a monkey but a rum-drinkin' snake is _my_ kind o' pet."

As Pepper let the creature wrap around her shoulders (with a rather wobbly sort of slither) and climbed out of the hold, no one saw the snake give Dog a Very Significant Look, and no one heard Dog whimper grudgingly.

 

~end part 1~

 

[1] The only arguable exception to this was Aziraphale's old rare-book-hoarding rival John Dee, who was a very good mathematician. But then, he wasn't so much a prophet as a champion celestial eavesdropper.  
[2] And indeed she had been. Before Captain Young spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of ship he really wanted, that is.  
[3] Captain Young sent his letters by dropping them into the sea in bottles. It wasn't completely reliable, but it had a better average than the regular land post. The reason for this is probably that Adam thought it should work.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which matters come to a head, and the crew of the Grog Blossom finds allies in unexpected places.

**One Week After This, and Still Quite Far, Yet Not Quite As Far**

Rum had its advantages, Wensleydale thought. Especially when other men drank too much of it.

The relative calm onboard the _Megiddo_ was marked only by honking, bearish snores, the flapping of the sails and creaking of the hemp and disconsolate squeaking of the fiddler, which gave little cover. Still the stolen pilot, now allowed a little more run of the ship and a little less flogging, risked his status by padding carefully down to the glum deck where the half-forgotten prisoner was held.

When the bookseller reached out to accept Wensleydale's gift of pilfered rum and turtle soup, his wrists passed through his iron chains as if they'd only been made of thoughts, and Wensleydale blinked. Twice. Mr. Fell should have been bearing a good deal more of his captivity on his face and in his clothing—in grime and sleeplessness at least—and yet he was completely unchanged.

"Oh dear," was all he said. "Thank you, lad." There was no mistaking his glumness, though. "I don't suppose there's a chance they might have saved some of the…that there'd be anything to _read_ on this barbarous barge?"

Wensleydale had only been hoping for some cheering accounts of London, but this could turn out to be more interesting. "Well…have you any knowledge of the heavens?"

Mr. Fell choked slightly on the soup. "As it happens, I do. Though it _has_ been a while."

With a flourish, Wensleydale produced some star charts from his depressingly ragged waistcoat. "Well, you see," he lowered his voice. "This isn't really my ship, you see. I'm not exactly here of my own will. In fact, you and I are pretty much in the same boat…"

"Yes, we are," said the bookseller crisply.

"_Figuratively_ speaking. As well as literally. I want to find my own ship."

"But you _are_ a, er, privateer…?"

"Pirate, Mr. Fell. Aye, that I am. I'm afraid so. That I did walk into with my eyes wide open."

"It's not exactly the healthiest of lifestyles…."

"I know that, sir. But all my oldest friends, even as children we played at it, and, well…"

"Hanging around with the wrong people," said Mr. Fell with a faraway look in his eyes. "I know someone who, well, never mind—"

"But I don't think they're the wrong people at all," Wensleydale said firmly. "_This_ lot," he waved his hand dismissively all around him. "_They're_ the wrong ones."

"That much is certainly clear to me," said Fell, with something like the most genteel of sneers. "Shall I tell you something? It wasn't passage to Virginia I was seeking."

"Oh really?" asked Wensleydale, scratching out a few last-minute corrections on his latitudinal calculations.

"It's a person I'm looking for. One of your profession." He looked closely at what the navigator was writing, and, forgetting himself, reached out his hand to take the quill – and corrected something.

Wensleydale felt numbers and degrees fall into place in his mind with a clattering clink like coins dripping into a wooden chest, satisfying and silvery. He stared at the paper for one moment, and at Mr. Fell for a longer one. "That's a Mercatorlike cheat, that is."

"Oh, I only met him once or twice," said Mr. Fell. "But his great friend Dr. Dee I knew quite well, and he used to play with that sort of equation all the time."

Wensleydale was now looking at his fellow prisoner in a whole new light; specifically the light of the slightly mad. For Mr. Fell was not particularly young, but he wasn't particularly old either, and certainly not of a vintage to have played number games and parlour astronomy with any of the weirdest minds of the Virgin Queen's day.

But there'd been that business with the chains, after all. And that strange thing that had happened to Captain Warlock and his sword.

"You're not a normal man," Wensleydale blurted.

"That's a rather rude way of putting it," said Mr. Fell flatly.

"I didn't mean that, I'm that too, f'r'heaven's sake," said Wensleydale.

"Heaven has … nothing to do with _that. _ Anyway, it's not as if I'm some sort of…sorcerer or warlock, I just…"

"That's the Captain's name, you know."

Mr. Fell dropped the quill. "_That_…is Captain Warlock?!"

Wensleydale laughed awkwardly. "Yeah…I thought you knew. That's him, we're on the _Megiddo, _ and…"

The bookseller took a deep breath and wrung his exquisitely manicured (and now slightly ink-stained) hands. "But he's…he's…a _perfectly ordinary man!" _

Wensleydale doubled over in suppressed glee. "Oh, he'd feed you to the sharks piece by piece if he heard _that! _ Worst kind of insult for his sort!"

"Oh goodness," said Mr. Fell, hand to his mouth. "I have to get out of there then…I have to tell…oh _dear." _

"I suppose you could get out of here any time you like then, couldn't you?" said Wensleydale morosely. "And I'll be stuck."

"My dear boy, I don't know why you think—"

"I'll tell you why I think," said Wensleydale. "Because my Captain, my real one, the one I'm looking for…is _not_ an ordinary man either. You learn to see it, when you see it. And you get used to it after a while."

"What do you mean?" Mr. Fell was looking at him very intently now.

"He has skills. Kenning. Indecent fortune. Powers, if you like. Lots of 'em. But it's a sore subject with him, see. Doesn't like to talk about it, and doesn't like to use it, though he will if he must. Pirate, y'know. It's the pirate code; if ya got it, flaunt it. But _all_ the codes are more like guidelines with him. Just if you meet him, don't bring it up. I think he wishes himself normal, and it's not his fault he simply isn't. Suits me well when he's around because it's the sort of thing I'd prefer not to have to believe in."

"Well, a spot of faith never hurt anyone, but—" Mr. Fell broke off when he realised he was being studied like an exotic specimen.

"I don't know about faith but I _hope_ he might also be looking for me." Wensleydale wasn't sure why he'd admitted that. It was not a belief he'd allowed himself to rely on, nor to dwell on too much, for if he did, the image of Adam searching the horizon with his spyglass and inquiring at every pirates' den and lair from Santiago to Siam brought with it the image of Brian at his side, squinting also into the unyielding sun, and that only made Wensleydale's own eyes want to squeeze shut.

"I'll stay, for now," said Fell quietly. "There are _two_ I need to find. You and your Captain are lucky to be only looking for one each."

"Oh, he's not the one I need to find _most," _ said Wensleydale conspiratorially. He owed Mr. Fell that much of a confidence, he supposed, though he couldn't be certain why. "But that one's on his ship, so…"

"Fortunate," said Fell, his eyes very far away again—something in them both longing and calculating at once. "May we all be so."

**Hispaniola**

"Fortune favours the bold," said the blind old man at the rickety table. "and how about your fortune favouring me, then?"

Adam Young placed three coins in his hand. They were gold, like he'd promised.

There wasn't any doubt the man could tell. "Her prices be higher than mine," he warned in his quavery voice that hadn't been the same since his throat was cut at Madagascar.

"I expect that," said Captain Young. Dog growled at his feet, objecting perhaps to his confidante's scent as much as his aura, which was as battered and leathery as his material component.

"Then here it be," the man said, drawing from his filthy pocket a battered bit of parchment. A map—of the _almost_ uncharted streams and byways and bayous to the North, on the mainland. "She'll know ye're comin', of course. And that be good for you—ye don't wanna be sneakin' up on her."

Adam nodded, and then made an assenting sound when he remembered that would have no effect.

"An' you can ask her _any question_ if ye think ye can afford it, if ye think ye can bear the answer…_but for one." _

"And that is?"

"Cost extra."

Adam sighed, and drew from his pocket another coin, and stared at it while he weighed its value. Definitely worth it to avoid a fatal mistake, no matter how remote the possibility might be. Besides, who'd begrudge a blind old man another doubloon he'd spend on grog quickly enough? He handed it over.

"Don't even be thinkin' of askin' her how many nipples she has."

Captain Young thought that had never been likely to occur to him before, but it was highly unlikely he'd get it out of his head now. "Is that…?"

"It be none of yer business how I lost me eyes!" the man shouted.

***

Back on the strand, Pepper and Brian walked beneath the palm trees, jugs in hand, laughing. Pepper'd been looking rather sleepless but not at all unhappy lately. Brian had been sinking further and further into his desperate dreams, hardly even bothering to clean himself off afterward anymore.

"I can tell you 'bout this, can't I, Pep?"

"I reckon, but I dunno what it is yet, so…" The snake on her shoulders that she wore like a sash drowsed and only made the occasional lazy swipe of its head at the rum jug.

"We gotta get him back, Pepper. I feel like I'm getting _sick._ Like I could _die. _ It's horrible. I stare at the horizon till I'm gonna go blind, and there's never any ship there. And I hear footsteps an' I'm thinkin' it's him, and of course it's not, and…"

"Oh Brian," Pepper said sadly. "All that mopin's not gonna help." She screwed up her nose. "And you kinda reek."

"What else can I do trapped on a damn ship all day an' night?"

"Well, he's on one too, I bet! Better chance of findin' him out there than on land."

"I just don't get…why Adam can't…I mean, he always knows where _we_ are!"

"Maybe he's just too far…or something, how'm I supposed to know?"

"He didn't tell you anything?"

"He just said it's like somethin's interferin', that's all. Somethin' getting' in the way of his sight."

"Well, if he can't do it, what makes him think this witch can?"

"Well, we gotta try everything!" Pepper shouted. "You think you're the only one who cares? Jus' cause you were swivin' him or you wanna be, you think that makes you the only one 'at loves him?"

Brian's jaw dropped.

"You thought it was a secret?" Pepper laughed. "You thought I didn't know?"

Even the bloody snake was snickering. Brian looked at it, his face flushing red, to avoid looking at Pepper, and he thought he saw gears turning in its chilly little reptile brain, and he almost thought he saw it go rigid with shock as if an idea had occurred to it. Well, it hadn't been a very useful pet so far. Wouldn't even eat rats like it was supposed to. Which was just as well, since Brian secretly liked rats.

 

***

They reached the hut in the swamp at twilight, as strange birds called from the ghostly, moss-draped cypress giants, and mysterious splashes and ripples from invisible creatures disturbed the stagnant waters fore and aft of their oar-strokes.

Dog had menaced away a particularly large alligator, and an apparent wrong turn had been mollified and corrected by Pepper's ophidian companion appearing to get better directions in a hissing language from an obese cottonmouth drowsing on a log (the snake's first obvious stroke of usefulness).

The yellow light of tallow candles beckoned through the universal grey of the darkening swamp, and a curved silhouette of a lady beckoned through the window, though hostile faces seemed to loom out of the gloaming all around them.

She had geraniums on her front porch. And belladonna.

The porch creaked unpleasantly as Adam and Pepper and Brian paced across its warped boards, but inside the house was the refreshing, and highly unexpected, smell of tea and gingerbread. Anna Thelma Nutter was a lot younger and a lot prettier and a hell of a lot more English than any of them had expected.

 

"Sit, sit," she said cheerily, vivacious black eyes glimmering in the low lamplight as she poured mugs of something that might have once been tea, but with a good bit more of a kick to it. "It's fate brought you here," she said, glancing at something that suggested an index card.

"We're looking for…," Brian said nervously.

"Your lost shipmate, of course," she said matter-of-factly, and drew out a bag from under her kitchen table. It rattled and clanked, and she drew open its strings.

"Is there something we ought to…er…"

For the first time the witch saw Adam, and her hand flew up to her mouth. "You," she said. Her voice seemed to take on a sort of harmony in itself, like an underlining. "You, in my house."

Adam scuffled the ground with his feet in his high shiny boots, looking for all the world like a nervous schoolboy in his great hat and coat and scarves and ribbons and swords and guns. "You don't hafta…"

"Well, if 'tis the end of days, then drink up!" Anna Thelma said.

"Er…?" said Pepper.

"Not that I think 'tis, mind you. I may be the black sheep of my family, but I know the Book was a lot thicker than that."

Pepper just hm'd, and looked down at Dog, who was sniffing the witch's buckled shoe with some interest.

"An' a fine specimen _you_ are," she said. Dog cocked his head, let his upturned ear brush her pretty ankle.

Anna Thelma reached in her bag and jostled little clicking things: seashells and crab claws and very old coins and strange wrinkled, brown roots, and little boiled bones. With a little gasp she jumped when she saw the snake peering intently over her shoulder.

"I don't give away trade secrets, you!" she said, rapping the serpent smartly on the head with her fingernail. "Just how many of the Legions have come to my door?"

She turned to Pepper. "That's no plain snake, you know."

Pepper looked down at the table and blushed. "Er…I know," she muttered. "He said he'd do anythin' if I kept 'is secret."

"And did he?"

"Yeah," Pepper said, with a little satisfied smirk. "He did pretty much everythin'."

"Smart girl," said Anna Thelma and tapped the snake again. Only the other male creatures were surprised when it turned into a lean, dark-haired man-shaped being who was already blushing himself.

"Well, I'm hardly the proper center of attention here," Crowley muttered ruefully. "Don't we have a job to do?"

"You should've told me," Adam said.

"Take it out of my hide," Crowley leered. "I know you can."

"Men!" said Pepper.

"Not exactly," said Anna Thelma, staring at a pattern of scattered bone-chips. "Brian, come here. Give me your hand."

Brian edged forward and extended his grimy palm with a little embarrassment. The witch just tsk'd once and then matched the patterns there with the ones on her table, spot for spot and streak for streak. "He's your navigator, yes?"

"Yes."

"And your lover, yes?"

Adam blinked. "I'm getting a lesson in humility here," he sighed.

Brian wasn't quite sure how to answer that.

"I'm sorry, getting' ahead of myself," said Anna Thelma cheerily, ignoring his mortification. "Just not sure when in time we are right now."

She peered close again. With his free hand, Brian reached into the pocket of his ragged breeches and drew out the bit of paper he'd kept there since Wensley's disappearance: the last scrap of star chart he'd made. She snatched it from him and peered deeply at it, her eyes going unfocused.

"I still want to know why I can't see it," Adam said.

"I'm not understanding that either," Anna Thelma murmured. "Unless…well if he's here….and then…but that…and then…"

"Huh?" said Brian.

"There are ships, and there are ships…it's all I see, ships. Under the sky….and there's no reason…help me. I have to think…the Book…"

She put her other hand to her temple under her black hair and clawed a little as if she hoped to draw something out of her ear. Then her eyes flew open and she spun around to look at Crowley. "Give me a feather," she said.

"Er…what?"

"Game's up, serpent. You're not fooling anyone. Now…please? I won't ask nice again."

"Wouldn't do it if you didn't," Crowley muttered in a surly fashion and stepped back from the table. With a flourish to make it look like he wanted to, he whipped off his ridiculously frilly shirt, and unfurled a wingspan wide enough to knock dishes from their racks on both sides of the kitchen. He plucked an alula and handed it to Anna Thelma before winching them back in and trying to disappear—which was difficult, for Pepper and Brian and even Adam were staring at him incredulously. The witch acted like she saw that every day.

"You never did _that_ in my cabin at night," Pepper whispered.

"You didn't ask," replied Crowley.

With the feather in the pattern now, Anna Thelma seemed more at ease. "Well that's it then," she said to Brian. "You'll find the one you're seeking when you find the one _he's_ seeking," and she nodded at Crowley. "Or the one he should be seeking when he's not slitherin' in the rum barrels or tossin' with a pirate gal. And _he's_ the reason you can't see, Adam. Got a bit of Heaven in your eye."

Crowley's eyes went wide. "You mean—"

"Aye, the other one," said Anna Thelma. "Your _enemy,"_ she said, making the word redolent of silk sheets and dripping honey.

Crowley sat down quickly, head in his hands. Brian looked at him with a newfound sympathy.

"And where will we find them then?" Adam said.

"Follow this chart. I read it in his hand, and I think you'll find I read it in the wind." On the back of the parchment scrap Brian had given her, she began to scrawl out a star chart. Her eyes were glazed and her hand was the only part of her that moved. From it she drew out, in hopelessly archaic hand, a number of degrees and finally a dithering blob that could have been an island and could have been a cloud. There were a few last scattered ink spots that could have been stars.

"East and north, by veiled moon and fairest winds. Follow your senses and follow my guide, and keep this close to hand," she said, drawing up a mojo bag that already smelled witchy even though she hadn't put anything in it yet. There were some roots and bones, scraps and shells, Crowley's feather and, when she snapped her fingers at Brian imperiously, he reluctantly gave up his greatest treasure—a scrap of cloth from Wensleydale's trousers. Though possibly not even Dog could have truly traced the navigator's scent upon it, Brian had liked to pretend he could.

"And this'll work?" Pepper said skeptically.

"If you keep this by the helm and don't get in the way of it, it will," the witch sniffed.

"Thank you," Adam said, having figured out some time ago it was best for him to mostly stay out of the way of this. For the first time in his existence, he'd actually felt he had little to contribute. That was probably about to change. "And now…how do we…pay you? A quest? The heart of a sea-priest or the rib of a ship from the bottom of the sea or a treasure-map from a maiden's grave or a lock of hair from Davey Jones himself or the talking skull of a man that's hung in chains, or…"

"You listen to too much pirate talk, Captain Young," said Anna Thelma, looking the disturbingly handsome youth up and down. "And stop thinkin' about that question you were told not to ask me."

Adam gaped. With a swish of her skirts and a bob of her cleavage, Anna Thelma rose from the table and threatened to shut his mouth for him. "D'you have any idea how bad most pirates _smell? _ I bet you don't 'cause you're used to it. But you don't. You smell very, very good."

Adam drew in breath sharply, for so did she.

"Don't you worry about my payment," she said in a throaty voice. "It's not going to hurt you. Quite the contrary."

Judging by the sounds coming from her room later, it did not indeed, and Adam very likely had the answer to his forbidden question.

Pepper stormed out to sulk in the boat. Brian and Crowley just drank companionably, if a little tensely.

**Two Weeks Later, on the North American Main**

Wensleydale stood half-awake at the helm of the _Megiddo, _ well aware of Pew and his gun nearby, reflecting on his latest conversation with Mr. Fell. Sure, the pirate code was fatally flexible…but weren't they all? And were the stars not indifferent to it all?

There was the sea, green-scented and breathing. There was the overcast sky, telling him nothing.

And there were flares. There were three tall masts on the horizon, coming up quick, and there was his stomach leaping into his throat, followed closely by his heart.

There was no doubt about it, and that was why he lowered his head quickly and pretended to see nothing. For the ship was clearly his own, and her black flag distinctively belonged to Captain Young. The "ahoy" would not be friendly, for Captain Warlock had never been any more a friend of fellow pirates than he had been of honest tradesmen—and if the bottom was sure to be Wensleydale's fate, better it be at the hand of his own friends.

For the pirate code was flexible and adaptable most of all in moments of need. And from his pocket, Wensleydale whipped the shiv he'd carved from a quill nib over his rare unsupervised hours from his pocket, and introduced it to Pew's liver. With a defiant flair, he abandoned his post for the first time in his life, and ran down many flights of ladders to visit his only friend on board for the last time.

***

"AHOY!" screamed Adam. He had a cutlass in his hand and a look of death in his eye as he swung the _Grog Blossom_ around to starboard. Close by his side, Pepper fondled pistols with both her small quick hands. Brian coiled his hands around the ropes of the ship's riggings, keenly aware of belaying pins in all four corners of his eyes.

"Ahoy, _what?" _ sneered the strutting Captain Warlock from his own much higher deck.

"I've come for what's mine," Adam said coldly, and his voice carried many, many yards from one ship to another. He stood firm, wind blowing his hair and coat.

"Why yes, I do have something of yours, I think," Warlock drawled, as his crewmates drew up two prisoners from the hold.

Brian swore, and the snake on Pepper's shoulders tensed at the sight of them, pulled up squirming and bound to the foremast.

"I take it that's—" Adam whispered to said serpent.

"Yeah, it's hissss fault," Crawly sighed. "Ssssstill…he meansss well."

"Not what he seems, though, right?"

"Not by a long sssshot."

"So then," said Captain Warlock, approaching the two prisoners with a splendid curved Barbary sword. "Whose throat shall I cut first?"

"Honestly, I hate to admit it, but mine," said Aziraphale.

"Oh, don't be so modest," said Wensleydale.

"No, _really," _ Aziraphale said glumly.

"Don't even THINK it, you DOGFUCKING SHITSTAIN," screamed Quartermaster Pepper, noting at last the ships had drawn close enough and watching Brian fumble with the grapple as best he could. With a bloodcurdling scream, she threw down the boarding plank, and was halfway over it in a bound and a half, until the _Megiddo_ fired its cannon and blew her right into the sea.

"PEPPER!!" Adam screamed with all the force of his heart, not knowing how raw that scream could be until the moment when he needed it.

She sank and sank, weighed down by her guns and swords, until the snake who'd gone down with her gave a bubbly sigh and erupted from the water in man-shaped form still holding her tight, water spraying into the _Megiddo_'s warriors' eyes from his mighty feathered wings, holding as his main weapon a kicking, clawing, sword-wielding harpy who'd taken out at least three men before he, Crowley, even shook the salt water from his eyes.

After that, another plank was produced from the _Grog Blossom_ in the shortest of orders.

If Warlock had had a mind to kill both his prisoners before the _Grog Blossom_'s crew could react, that was well and truly thwarted, for Adam was upon him before he could enact it. The two captains were up and down the ship's decks, swords clashing and teeth bared.

"Crowley!" Aziraphale cried from his disadvantageous position. "Rather _showy! "_

"Easy for _you_ to say, angel-tits," the demon growled, having found himself in a sword battle with the _Megiddo_'s 7-foot quartermaster.

"Wensleydale…are you….?" came a breathless whisper, and Aziraphale turned around from chiding his counterpart only to see his only ally being pinned harder and faster against the mast by another young man, a rather grimy one, who seemed to think only of tongues and their proper places in others' mouths.

Pepper was backed against the rail, four to one, one arm dangling and bleeding, sword slowing.

Men circled in on the mast where Wensleydale and Brian and Aziraphale were, the latter two tied. And the angel was waiting for the right moment to break out and cause as little harm as possible.

Crowley had been doing fairly well with his rudimentary fencing skills from his days in Florence, until he slipped on the garish residue of someone's brains and ocean spray and found himself facing discorporation at a fourth-hand machete (that had done no favours for its first three owners).

And Adam, well, he was still angry. More so by the minute, in fact. Fighting for the lives of his friends against men who valued none of the above, he started thinking, way back in his mind even as his sword danced and parried against Warlock's, even as the ropes of the rigging swung to his hand at a thought and he danced nimbly across barreltops, of how the world could be better than this. And as his love and his rage grew and swelled together in proportion, the sky rose to meet him, in sheets of rolling pewter grey. A wind arose and the sea convulsed.

The squall hit both ships broadside.

There were little victories. Crowley kicked the man against him hard in the gut and rose, rippling and changing, casting maggots everywhere.

 

Aziraphale grew tired of the ropes and made them fall away at his and Wensleydale's feet, taking out the bosun of the _Megiddo_ with one great swipe of a wing and denying him last rites out of sheer spite, while Wensleydale and Brian, now joined at the hip, stared at him.

They _could_ change the course with a blink.

But everyone was staring at Adam, who was the eye of the storm, literally. Rain lashed his hair and power lashed his eyes and gripped his fists as he faced down Warlock.

"IMPOSTOR," he said in clear All Caps, as the human cringed a bit but still aimed his pistol. "YOU CANNOT KILL ME WITH A GUN. OR ANY MORTAL WEAPON."

"Er…Adam?" murmured Pepper, who in her disadvantaged space still reached for a sword on the belt of a mesmerised pirate.

Lightning ripped the sky open, and a mast of the _Megiddo_ with its top-heavy sail submitted at last to the wind, snapping and falling like a primeval tree, taking out at least two of the ship's men.

Aziraphale looked at Crowley, sprawled at his feet, "We could…you know…"

"I know…but…" For Crowley too was terribly, fatally, helplessly mesmerised by the spectacle of Lucifer's son in his furious glory, ready to take them all to the bottom rather than submit—as the pirate code demanded, but so did one far older.

_Non serviam. _

"I'm sorry," Wensleydale babbled to Brian, hackles of the End rising, "When I said…I didn't mean…I have no regrets…I mean…watch…"

With a blink Wensleydale nudged Aziraphale, and the angel burst forward shining, willing to take on the responsibility of miracle, if needed now—and still looking out for the blue light that could take him away from Earth and all that meant forever. Perhaps he and Crowley could hold back the storm, at least for a little while, but only if…

Brian's eyes were huge and luminous as Wensleydale kissed him again and murmured, "I've had so much time to think, I know for sure I'd rather die with you than live without you."

The sea threw up massive furious swells as Adam spoke with it.

And then the stern of the _Megiddo_ erupted in cannon fire.

There was a third ship.

She was of Dutch make, tall and slim, and her name was the _Angelfish_, and she flew the Jolly Roger.

"AVAST," yelled her Captain "Greasy" Johnson, who saluted Adam in a clumsy parody of the Royal Navy manner and was shouting something incomprehensible about Port Royal and a beating and a warning and a life debt.

And for the first time in many a year, the evil rot-toothed dogs of the _Megiddo_ were well and truly outnumbered.

Re-inspired, the _Grog Blossom_'s wounded crew (and the _Megiddo_'s fifth columnists) took up the battle again, and with the added influx of a tide of happy, brawling Colonials from the _Angelfish_ soon had Captain Warlock backed against his chain-shot-broken mizzenmast alone and dejected and facing…a rather menacing Wensleydale making threatening whipping motions.

"No quarter!" yelled Pepper, completely oblivious to her bleeding arm (and to Aziraphale behind her trying to convince Brian he shouldn't handle bandages with his hands in their unhygienic state). "Feed 'em to the sharks! Tried to kill us all!"

"Er…" said Crowley, who happened to be standing nearest to Adam, and knew perfectly well it wasn't his place to make a case to Adam's better nature. He tossed a nervous glance to the angel. This decision was going to mean a lot.

"Oh, I know," Adam said. "But he didn't, though. I wouldn't've let that happen."

"We could play a nice round o' kick with 'is head," Greasy Johnson said. "Good 'n' hard, it is."

Adam sighed as the clouds above his head paused most unnaturally. "But y'know, I used to think you were a right shite, too, Greasy."

"Well, I am," said the now-friendly rival pirate. "But ye did me a good turn back there, an' so…"

"Yeah," said Adam quietly. "Most folks are like that. You do 'em a good turn, and they'll do ye one back. So if we do 'im a good turn and let 'im live, then maybe someday…"

"Givin' him too much credit, if'n you ask me."

"Sure, but it's better to give folks too much credit than too little sometimes. 'Sides, I ain't gonna make it easy. I figure if Wensleydale wants to flog him, that's alright. And I was just plannin' on maroonin' 'im. With some food and stuff."

"He's got a lot of gold down there."

"Well, they can't eat that. You and your boys can have it, Greasy, I got plenty and I got no trouble getting' more. I got the best crew in the world."

Crowley and Aziraphale shot each other a Look. It was one thing entirely for the Antichrist to have grown up a normal lad—if technically an international criminal--but this was veering into the territory of the Moral of the Story part of boys' tales that hadn't been written yet. (But would have to be based on _something_ when they were.)

***

And that was what was done. Evening descended gently over the three clustered ships, and the clouds receded to do nothing more dangerous than form shimmering pink and orange borders to a glorious sunset.

Greasy Johnson and his crew were more than pleased with the spoils from the _Megiddo_, and offered to pitch in an evening's work repairing the damage they'd inflicted on the captured ship, which by rights belonged to Adam now. It took far less time than they'd thought.

Outside the cabins near the _Grog Blossom_'s stern, taking a break from the repairs on Adam's flagship, Brian gently peeled away Wensleydale's torn shirt, and groaned in sympathy at the healing lash marks. He proffered a ceramic jar of a salve, though he suspected it didn't have much to do with his true motive.

Wensleydale put up a token resistance to the attention. Briefly.

But once Brian got Wensleydale alone and in his small cabin, his healing caresses went far further than they'd needed to at first, and the sounds they made were no longer of compassion or pain but of something even more compelling.

And the sounds even carried upon the poop deck above them, where the repairs were still on going, though without any benefit of hammer or caulk or elbow grease in any form.

"I don't think it had those baroque running lanterns before."

"I suppose I got a little carried away," Aziraphale sighed.

_ "Oh lord, heal this ship,"_ Crowley muttered sarcastically.

"Well, they _are_ nice young people," Aziraphale said. "For pirates, I mean. Not like that horrid…" and he shuddered.

Crowley whirled around quickly. "They didn't _hurt_ you, did they?"

"No, no," Aziraphale said. "They thought they could get money out of me, but…"

"If they had, I'd _hunt them down and tear them to pieces," _ Crowley blurted, relief and rum speaking, and then a change came over his face in embarrassment.

Aziraphale wasn't going to let it slide. "Really, my dear? Only because that's _your_ job?"

Crowley took a deep breath, bit a metaphorical bullet, and took Aziraphale's hand. "Awfully soft hands you've got…for a pirate."

"I'm _not—"_

"We'll see about that," Crowley said, and silenced Aziraphale with his mouth.

Neither of them saw the limping and slightly drunken Quartermaster Pepper watching them from the shadows, just coming from having gone to find Brian and Wensleydale and having walked in on them in a state of very active obliviousness to her presence. As mental images went, it was both disturbing and...well…

She had a choice here. She could make a scene. Or not. And, tightening her good hand around her rum bottle, she decided that she would.

Only not with them.

She strode boldly to the fo'c's'le, where fiddlers were playing and men were dancing and singing, and Captain Young was leading a jolly round and making free with the rum for all hands, his face flushed and his eyes bright.

"Pepper! Pepper, my hero! Come and claim what's yours!" he said, gesturing broadly at the chests of gold and jewels that some men were literally rolling in (while Dog rolled even more happily in a large slab of salt beef).

"I will!" she said, and she set her bottle down and marched straight past the treasure, and seized Adam, kissing him so hard and so long he half swooned backwards to the deck like a maiden in her corset, and she held him firm with her unbandaged arm.

***

"So," said the Captain a little awkwardly the next morning, a jaunty red scarf tied around his neck to cover up some telltale marks. "Wensleydale, Brian tells me that…before all this happened…you were thinkin' of goin' back to land and all…"

"That was _before," _ said Wensleydale, his eyes darting constantly back toward Brian's. "Life is too short, an' all. I'm stayin'."

"We don't have that excuse," Crowley whispered to Aziraphale, to a gentle elbow in the ribs.

"And Quartermaster Pepper," he said formally. "I have a choice for you now. You've led this crew in battle for many years an' many great victories an' never asked for more'n' your fair share, and you've always been loyal, an…"

She nodded impatiently.  
"And so," Adam said. "If you want…a command of your own…the _Megiddo_ is rightfully yours."

"I was thinkin' you might do that," she said, walking to railing of the _Grog Blossom_ and looking up lovingly at the proud galleon with her repaired sails and her gleaming prow and her menacing cannon and her new Jolly Roger flying free in the sea-reflected sun. She stared at her for a long moment, and then looked back at Brian, and Wensleydale, and most of all at Adam.

"Nah," she said. "It wouldn't be as much fun all by myself. I like bein' with you guys. And I don't wanna be the big boss. It's like cleanin' people's rooms for 'em. And I've never done that in my life, and I won't start now."

Adam tried to take this with proper solemnity, but his boyish grin made the glint of sun on sea look dull. Brian and Wensleydale cheered unabashedly.

"Well, then…" he thought for a minute. "I could start a fleet I guess. But I know some captains 'at's done that, an' it's more trouble than it's worth, I think. Keep it simple."

He looked up at the tall masts for a second, and then the sky, and then the sea, and he whirled around and fixed his otherworldly eyes right on Crowley and Aziraphale.

"Oh my goodness, no," Aziraphale said, blushing.

"Why not?" Adam said. "You're not the greatest ever at bein' an angel an' a demon. I think you could make jolly good pirates with a little practice, though."

"Hmmm," said Crowley to Aziraphale. "I bet you haven't been to the Mediterranean in _centuries." _

"Do we have to decide…right now?" Aziraphale said, a little mesmerised by all the confusing rigging, and wishing Crowley hadn't told him he looked rather fetching tied to the mast, for he'd been thinking it would suit Crowley even better.

"No, you don't," Adam said. "There's still a lot of rum left." (And there would continue to be, for Adam assumed there always was, and no one of the odd gathered assembly would ever be so tasteless as to make a joke about loaves and fishes, though there were a couple as might think it.)

"And we'll never run out of sea," said Brian, looking at Wensleydale.

"Nor stars," said the pilot, looking for them in Brian's eyes.

 

~end~


End file.
